Skip to main content

Think City!

Two weeks ago I got invited by Think City, a subsidiary of Khazanah Nasional Berhad the Government of Malaysia Strategic Investment Fund and the World Futures Studies Federation to give a keynote speech on UNESCO Foresight Global Anticipatory Thinking project and help facilitate the city futures for city leaders futures course held in George Town, Penang, Malaysia.

Think City was created to spearhead community based urban regeneration in Penang and transform the state into an “engine of future growth” in line with the tenth Malaysia plan. Established in 2009, Think City has led innovative initiatives that resulted to the enhancement of Penang’s assets, tangible and intangible, to arrest urban decay and sustainable urban regeneration.

Around 35 city leaders and CEOs from various national government agencies of Malaysia, graduate students from Taiwan, Singapore-based research think tanks, architects, and directors of regional and national public service departments under the office of Prime Minister Razak attended the course. The State Minister of Penang and his staff also attended the three-day workshop.

At the panel, I met Anwar Fazal, the chairman of Think City and Anthony Capon, United Nations University director of the International Institute for Global Health. Sohail Inayatullah (notably one of the best in the futures world right now according to Singapore-based think tank Shaping Tomorrow Network), Cesar Villanueva of the WFSF, Dave Duncan of Think City, Jeanne Hoffman from Macquarie University and MeiMei Song of Tamkang University ran and co-facilitated the course.

The three-day workshop introduced futures thinking and strategic foresight and through collective intelligence participants explored, mapped, anticipated, simulated, questioned, gamed and co-created some plausible alternative and preferred city futures for Penang, Kuala Lumpur, Johor Bahru, Melaka, Taipei, Singapore, and Victorias City of Oriental Negros. Mayor Francis Palanca and his city planning development team attended the course (his intention was to learn something about foresight and to explore some strategies to integrate and deepen the context of Victorias’ planning and development agenda).  

At the breakout sessions, new and emerging plausible future cities emerged like the CompaCity for the Kuala Lumpur group—high end, low cost, greening and growing, wealthier and healthier KL residents and communities. Another one which was quite similar with the Penang group’s emerging city future scenario, the KL team envisioned a polycentric urban agglomeration or the merger of cities and other urban areas they called ‘urban conurbation’. The push here was to develop a new high speed rail link that connects the urban regions of the Straits of Malacca including Penang, KL, Putrajaya, Johor Bahru and Singapore. The vision was to increase the level of connectivity of people and ideas. The context was to change old concepts of traditional urban/city boundaries and create a larger urban system and new scale of planning across larger territorial boundaries.

Recently, the Prime Ministers of Malaysia and Singapore agreed to build a High Speed Rail between KL and Singapore to improve connectivity. City leaders envisioned this to occur ‘within’ Malaysia.  The end was to create better social outcomes, optimize growth, deepening economic integration and cross-promotional branding. The vision of urban conurbation was to connect 16 million people and enhance their capacity for compactness, productivity and innovation.   

The third city scenario that emerged at the workshop was the “Greenology” city futures for Taipei City.  Here, the concept was to embed information and 3D-4D technologies on urban landscape, planning and city transformation.  Instead of modernity, visuality and transmodernism and ‘greening’ now informs the life and experiences of Taiwanese residents and communities; that transactions, commerce and social transformation occurs in the virtual world while greens, slow time, culture, meditation and self-realization, the eco-city, the Gaian and spiritual city is real in the physical world.

While Singapore ranks third on Asian city competitiveness Index and that its global appeal appears to be the highest in Asia, Inayatullah shared that Singapore continues to explore ways of reimagining the Singapore city futures narrative and creating options for alternative city models.

Inayutallah presented some case studies on how emerging cities like Singapore and Penang are redefining city concepts and landscapes such as the city from the geographic and singular space to a multiple, desired and ethical space and having more forward looking politicians reimagining their roles as representatives of their constituents to that of brokering ideas and mediating disputed visions.

For Inayatullah cities of the future could emerge as full players in the global political landscape (the nation-state is losing its relative importance) and may, Singapore appears to be a leading indicator, pioneer the return of the City-State?


So what will the future of your city be like?  Smart? Gaian? Sprawl? Old World? A Global Brand? A failed city like Manila? Or Penang—greening and growing city of the future?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Empanada festival: A celebration of good taste and good life

By Dominic B. dela Cruz & Leilanie G. Adriano Staff reporters BATAC CITY—If there is one thing Batac is truly proud of, it would be its famous empanada-making business that has nurtured its people over the years. Embracing a century-old culture and culinary tradition, Batac’s empanada claims to be the best and tastiest in the country with its distinctive Ilokano taste courtesy of its local ingredients: fresh grated papaya, mongo, chopped longganisa, and egg. The crispy orange wrapper and is made of rice flour that is deep-fried. The celebration of this city’s famous traditional fast food attracting locals and tourists elsewhere comes with the City Charter Day of Batac every 23 rd  of June. Every year, the City Government of Batac led by Mayor Jeffrey Jubal Nalupta commemorate the city’s charter day celebration to further promote its famous One-Town, One Product, the Batac empanada. Empanada City The Batac empanada festival has already become an annua

PIDS expert says income tax cuts justified; warns gov’t of revenue loss

Proposals to amend the personal income tax schedule appear to be well-justified. However, these proposals should include measures that will allow government to recover the revenue loss from lower income taxes. Dr. Rosario Manasan, senior research fellow of state think-tank Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS), said at a seminar sponsored by the Philippine Senate, that government should look for new revenue measures to compensate for the projected revenue loss that will arise as a result of the implementation of any of the various proposals to restructure the personal income tax. Currently, there are several income tax reform proposals pending in both houses of Congress. All of them, according to Dr. Manasan, have the same objective of addressing the phenomenon of bracket creep, which results from “non-indexation to inflation of personal income tax brackets”. Simply put, bracket creep occurs when employees’ income increases over time as a result of inflation. Th

PGIN honors Ilocano heroes of past, present through Heroes Walk

SPO1 Allan Lampitoc Franco of Banna, Ilocos Norte and PO2 Jovalyn D. Lozano of Adams, Ilocos Norte receive a resolution of commendation, a certificate of college scholarship grant to their family members and a P20,000 cash incentive each from the Provincial Government of Ilocos Norte represented by Governor Imee R. Marcos and Vice Governor Angelo M. Barba in recognition of their bravery and heroic acts in the Mamasapano clash in Maguindanao on January 25. Mr. Franco and Mr. Lozano were recognized on March 10 in time for the unveiling of the second batch of Ilocano heroes at the Heroes Walk located along the Sirib Mile in Laoag City.  (Lei Adriano) By Jennifer T. Pambid PGIN-CMO In honor of the heroes who brought freedom, fame and glory to the province as well as to the country in the past century, the Provincial Government of Ilocos Norte (PGIN) through the Education Department and Sirib Youth Office launched the second batch of Ilocano Heroes Walk on March 10, 2015.